Text Foundations of Traveller

Deciphering the Text Foundations of Traveller

by Michael Andre-Driussi
 

In the science fiction game Traveller, players take on the roles of wandering interstellar adventurers who are willing to take on dangerous and/or illegal jobs for pay. The genre sources for Traveller (now known as “Classic Traveller” or “CT” for short) are as obscured as a medieval palimpsest, yet a careful sifting through the evidence reveals the hidden roots, which in turn point to the pathways of genre evolution from 1965 to 2001.

First published by Game Designers’ Workshop (GDW) in 1977, CT provided the new medium of role-playing games with a science fiction setting comparable to the fantasy setting established by Dungeons & Dragons three years earlier. CT was not the first science fiction role-playing game (SFRPG), but it was the most successful of those appearing in the ‘70s. There can be no doubt the game benefited from the release of Star Wars in the same year and the subsequent market boom in science fiction, yet CT was not initially inspired by it or any other media SF. In contrast to other early games like Gamescience’s Space Patrol (1977), which took its name from the 1950s TV show, and Fantasy Game Unlimited’s Starships and Spacemen (1978), which was the first role-playing game to imitate Star Trek, CT was driven by written SF. Classic Traveller sketched out a universe based upon a mixture of elements drawn from a number of science fiction novels, just as Dungeons and Dragons had done for fantasy, but where D&D was open about its source texts (naming in the rules book such classics as Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Vance’s The Dying Earth, and Moorcock’s Elric books), CT was more cryptic.

There are two good reasons for CT’s roots to have been obscured, one legal and the other aesthetic. In the beginning, both TSR (publisher of D&D) and GDW (publisher of CT) were encouraging their customers to “do it yourself” in adapting favorite genre works to their respective games. TSR was so blatant about borrowings that they quickly ran afoul of copyright holders: Warriors of Mars (1974) presented Barsoom without license and brought the ire of the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate; Deities and Demigods (1980) contained unlicensed material belonging to H.P. Lovecraft and Michael Moorcock, sections of which were dropped from the second edition in 1981. [Games based upon legally licensed media SF also came in the 1980s: FASA’s Star Trek (1982) and West End Games’s Star Wars (1987).] On the aesthetic side, GDW clearly did not want to be bound to reproducing the entirety of an author’s universe: they just wanted to take what they considered to be the best bits of a few and make a new, organic whole of it. Call it the Frankenstein approach, where a new creature is made from parts taken from anonymous donors.

The look and feel of CT is internally consistent and somewhat generic, yet still rather difficult to match with a precursor. One would expect a science fiction role-playing game set in a galactic empire to look like Asimov’s Foundation trilogy (1942-50), the granddaddy of all galactic empires, yet CT does not—eschewing Asimov’s atomic ashtrays, blasters, the full-metal planet Trantor, and a stardrive of such speed that a trip from the galactic rim to the core can be done in a honeymoon jaunt. Likewise CT does not look or feel like Frank Herbert’s Dune (1960s ecology SF), or Larry Niven’s “Known Space” (1960s hard SF), or E.E. “Doc” Smith’s “Lensman"(1930s space opera). It might seem strange that an SFRPG based on SF texts would somehow miss all the so-called classics, but the problem is that these classics are mutually exclusive—they cannot blend well together. What the creators of CT were after was science fiction adventure, featuring freelance “adventurers” (with all the connotations of gold hunters, mercenaries, and trail blazers that this term implies) who could live or die in the course of pick-up games. They seem inspired by adventure movies like The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The Wages of Fear, and The Man Who Would Be King; noir movies like Yojimbo and Kiss Me Deadly; “heist” movies like Rififi and Le Cercle Rouge. All of which amounts to the polar opposite of Star Trek (where everyone works together for the government, the government is good, there is a moral code in the “Prime Directive,” and nobody important dies).

The amoral (or morally ambiguous) and violent nature of these adventures is attested to by the game’s rules:

The key to adventure in Traveller is the patron. When a band of adventurers meets an appropriate patron, they have a person who can give them direction in their activities, and who can reward them for success. . . . A patron will, if he decides to hire a band of adventurers, specify a task or deed to be performed, and then finance reasonable expenses for the pursuit of that task. Some tasks may be ordinary in nature, such as the hiring of guards or escorts; other tasks may be the location and procurement of items of great value (Book 3, Worlds and Adventures, 25).

The earliest mini-adventures published in the magazine The Journal of the Travellers' Aid Society followed this pattern: “The Ship in the Lake” (1979) describes a sunken treasure in a war zone; “Planetoid P-4638” (1979) is a job of industrial espionage and covert operations; “Salvage on Sharmun” (1980) offers sunken treasure on a proscribed world. The first double-adventures expanded the range somewhat: “Shadows” and “Annic Nova” (1980) are essentially two “dungeon crawls,” one in an alien pyramid complex, the other in a derelict starship. “Across the Bright Face” and “Mission on Mithril” (1980) are both “wilderness adventures,” one on a hot world, the other on an icy planet.

Supplement 6: 76 Patrons (1980), goes much further, providing 60 basic jobs for adventurers. Of these missions, some 10 percent are morally good (three cases of missing persons, one case each of “find a hidden place,” anti-smuggling, and anti-theft) and 20 percent are neutral (bodyguard, ship work, and “guard a place”). The remaining majority of 70 percent are criminal activities, including eight burglaries (five in a Watergate style), four assassinations (two of them political leaders), two cases each of hijacking and kidnapping, and one noteworthy case of global terrorism with a weapon of mass destruction.

This is not to condemn CT but to establish its noir character beyond any shadow of doubt. The universe of CT is definitely not that of Star Trek, nor that of Star Wars, nor even that of L. Sprague de Camp’s “Viagens Interplanetarias” adventure stories. CT is hard-line noir, as exemplified by the logical “sequel” to 76 Patrons in the form of the full-length adventure Prison Planet (1982).

The creators of CT wanted the anarchic, amoral, and violent adventure of fantasy role playing translated into a science fiction setting. They also wanted a kind of science fiction that used more “hard SF” than even Niven’s work. They categorically rejected New Wave SF, which made them allied to the Old Wave, except that GDW wanted a gritty, noir setting (where the Old Wave is characterized as upbeat and moral). This made a lot of sense: the mystery genre had long since gone noir, and more recently Westerns had followed suit (starting with Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars in 1964), so it seemed a safe bet that SF would leave the New Wave and “go noir” in the near future.

In short, GDW wanted a form of science fiction that was as reinvented and redefined as the Western movie had been transformed by the “spaghetti Westerns.”

GDW published CT with plenty of DIY (“do it yourself”) encouragement for its buyers to make their own settings, since initially they were purchasing a game system with only a vague Imperial background. The contradictory streams of encouraging DIY universes and providing official Third Imperium material began with the first supplement and continued for some time: an appendix in 1001 Characters (1978) provided a list of heroes “drawn from the pages of science fiction” (43); the fourth supplement, Citizens of the Imperium (1979), had a second list of famous SF heroes and villains, and a citation of the sources for both lists. Aside from showing the versatility of the game system in being able to handle famous characters from divergent universes, this was also a possible opportunity to quietly reveal the heretofore hidden sources of CT itself.

Of the fourteen source-text titles, three are single novels and eleven are series (media SF is covered with two characters from Star Wars and one from Star Trek). To be fair, the context of the list was “famous SF heroes and villains that could be used in CT,” but most of the settings seem like a stretch for the CT milieu (the universal psionics of The Stars My Destination; the comedy of the Stainless Steel Rat series; and the hospital drama of the Sector General series, to name a few). On the following table, “Ease of DIY” is the estimated difficulty for a referee to create a given setting, with 5 being the easiest and 1 being the most difficult.

Title	Notes	Ease of DIY
Barsoom series	One planet, fantasy feel	4
Lensman series	1930s Space Opera	2
Deathworld Trilogy	Single planet	3
Dumarest saga	Galactic wanderer	5
Niven’s “Known Space”	Big scale, FTL	4
Panshin’s Starwell	Detective comedy/parody	3
Flandry series	Working for empire	3
Demon Princes series	Detective/Revenge	3
The Stars My Destination	Everyone teleports mentally	1
The Stainless Steel Rat	Thief Comedy	3
CoDominium series	FTL jumplines, force fields	3
Sector General series	Space hospital	1
Retief series	Diplomat Comedy	3
The Stars, Like Dust	Foundation universe	2

Of all of these, only one scores a 5; the one title that turns out to be an authentic source of inspiration for CT is E.C. Tubb’s Dumarest saga.

E. C. Tubb’s Dumarest of Terra series (1967 onward) portrays its titular hero as a far future Odysseus trying to find his way home across a galaxy that has forgotten Earth completely. Each novel is slim and action-packed: Earl Dumarest arrives penniless at a new planet where he must use his wits and his reflexes, not only to survive but also to make enough money for passage to the next planet. From this series, already 17 books long in 1977, CT got such details as: low passage (a deadly hibernation system); mesh armor; the drugs fast, slow, medical slow, and combat (i.e., two-thirds of the drugs in CT); the weapon “blade”; and perhaps the psionics.

In some cases the original context was warped: in Dumarest’s universe, low passage kills one in six human passengers, just as in CT. But it was never meant for human use; it is for animals only (so the high death rate for CT’s “frozen watch” of the Imperial Navy is an artifact of this warping). In Dumarest the wealthy passengers travel “high passage” whereby their subjective time-frames are slowed down by expensive drugs called “quick-time” so that the long voyage between stars goes by more quickly (similar to CT’s “Fast” drug, but CT avoided that New Wave “high” passage for aesthetic reasons). Everybody else travels middle passage, that is, in real time.

Classic Traveller	Tubb’s Dumarest of Terra
CT Low Passage	Dumarest Low Passage
“Transportation while in cold sleep (suspended animation) is possible at relatively low cost to the passenger. . . . Unfortunately, the low passage system involves some intrinsic dangers to the passenger, and he runs some risk of not surviving the voyage. Throw 5+ for each passenger [i.e., 17 percent death rate]”	“Riding in the bleak cold sections in caskets meant for the transport of livestock, risking the 15 percent death rate for the sake of cheap travel” (Lallia, 6).
CT “Mesh”	Dumarest’s signature armor
“A jacket or body suit made of natural or synthetic leather and reinforced with a lining of flexible metal mesh, similar to chain mail but lighter and stronger”	“Looking down he saw scratches in the gray plastic of his tunic. They were deep enough to reveal the gleam of protective mesh buried in the material” (Jester, 13)
CT “Blade”	Dumarest’s signature weapon
“A hybrid knife weapon with a heavy, flat two-edged blade nearly 300 mm [11.75 in.] in length, and a semi-basket handguard. Because of the bulk of the handguard, it is generally carried in a belt scabbard” [note that the CT dagger is 200 mm (8 in.)]	“Transferring it to his left hand he drew the ten-inch knife from his boot, poising it as his eyes searched the darkness” (Toyman, 6).
CT “Slow Drug”	Dumarest Slow-time, diluted
The user experiences the world as being two times slower than normal. It is used as a combat enhancer through speeded-up reflexes.	“[a diluted dose of] slow-time…to him, time had slowed so that he could do more in a second than could a normal man” (Jester, 9).
CT “Medical Slow Drug”	Dumarest Slow-time
The user experiences the world as being thirty times slower than normal. It is used to promote rapid healing and has sedation built in, but it is often used in conjunction with “Medical drug” to promote further healing.	“Beneath the [transparent] covering he could see the flesh almost totally healed. Hormones, he thought, or perhaps even slow-time, the magical chemical which speeded the metabolism so that a man lived a day in a few minutes” (Jondelle, 12). Used in conjunction with sedation and intravenous feeding.
CT “Fast Drug”	Dumarest Quick-time
The user experiences the world as being sixty times faster than normal, used as an emergency form of suspended animation.	“The magic of quick-time…slowed his metabolism down so that he lived at one fortieth the normal rate. He, the girl, the others who traveled on High passage” (Kalin, 23).
CT “Combat Drug”	Dumarest Slow-time while conscious
Provides user with enhanced strength and endurance.	“You said that you knew what you were doing but few have used slow-time in the conscious state” (Gath, 163). “He was living at about forty times the normal rate” (Gath, 165).

Perhaps more importantly, CT got the name “traveller.” In Dumarest’s universe this is the term for an adventurer who has no ship of his own and goes from world to world. After the handler has revived Dumarest from the low passage coffin, he asks, “What’s it like being a traveler? I mean, what do you get out of it?”

It’s a way of life,” said Dumarest. “Some like it, some don’t. I do.”
“How do you go about it? What do you do between trips?”
“Look around, get a job, build another stake for passage to somewhere else (The Winds of Gath, Dumarest #1, p. 5).

Nine books later, an observer notes: “A traveler. A man who moved from world to world. . . . A wanderer who had seen a hundred worlds” (Jondelle, Dumarest #10, p. 6).

On the CT side we find this expressed as: “Looking for work is a constant chore for travellers” (back cover of adventure Expedition to Zhodane, 1981).

In his novels, Tubb uses “one-L” traveler, the American spelling of the word. By using the older, British, “two-L” form, GDW deftly evokes an imperial history of far-flung territories: the exotic English-speaking world beyond the American shore: South Africa, India, Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, etc.

CT owes a lot to Dumarest: at the detail level there is a ship’s locker worth of equipment; at the thematic level there is the gritty, money-grubbing “traveler” which serves as the symbol of the CT adventurer. One critical thing missing from Dumarest is a galactic empire—for this the creators of CT went to another cryptic source, a text that forms another strong root for CT even though it does not appear in the “heroes and villains” list. This unmentioned elephant in the corner is H. Beam Piper’s Space Viking.

H. Beam Piper’s “Terro-Human” series, a future history of novels and stories covering 30 centuries, had a big collective influence on CT, but none were so powerful as the novel Space Viking. Here was a warrior aristocracy for good and for ill, but not for ridicule (as are the nobles in Asimov’s Foundation trilogy). Here were space raiders with no blasters or even lasers, instead using gunpowder weapons and nuclear bombs. (Piper was a gun-nut with quite a personal collection, and his use of gunpowder weapons in an interstellar setting is a good match for CT, where laser pistols were forbidden as “fantasy.”)

Space Viking opens on the planet Gram, with hero Lord Lucas Trask’s bride Elaine being killed at their wedding by the submachine gun-wielding madman Lord Andray Dunnan. Dunnan then steals a starship to escape the Sword-Worlds and Trask sets out to track him down, beginning an interstellar manhunt for revenge, with worlds for plunder along the way. The chase goes on for years, with Trask building up a low-tech planet named Tanith into a Viking base while Dunnan purposefully imitates Hitler in subverting Marduk, a civilized welfare-state planet: only Trask’s Space Vikings can save the world.

CT’s supplement The Spinward Marches (1979) depicted a frontier region of Imperial space, a map for the settings of many published adventures. Near the center of this map lies a group of planets called “the Sword Worlds,” each one named after a legendary sword (Excalibur, Gram, etc.)—just as they are in SV. But sword names are not copyrighted, so there is no way of proving that these sword worlds are taken from Piper’s Sword-Worlds.

Space Viking has very little description of the Sword-Worlds themselves. Piper writes of the planet Gram, “the huge red sun hung in a sky as yellow as a ripe peach” (Space Vikings, 1). Before long he compares Gram and Excalibur while thinking of his coming honeymoon with Elaine: “And she would see clear blue skies again, and stars at night. The cloudveil hid the stars from Gram, and Elaine had missed them, since coming home from [college on] Excalibur” (Ibid., 2). Gram’s leader, Duke Angus, later calls himself King and exerts control over the other Sword-Worlds.

GDW’s planet Gram has this code: “A895957-B.” The first “9” describes the planet’s atmosphere as “dense and tainted,” which is what one would expect for a world with a constant cloud veil and a “yellow” sky. Gram is also the subsector capital, the administrative seat of all the Sword Worlds.

GDW’s world Excalibur has the code: “B324755-A.” The “2” means that the atmosphere is “thin and tainted.” The stars shine bright on such a planet.

From the micro details of a few planetary settings we move to the macro detail of planetary and interstellar government. Among CT’s planetary government types, an elegant Aristotelian spectrum ranging from “Anarchy” to “Religious Dictatorship,” there is the curious term “Feudal Technocracy.” Curious because such a government type is not known from history, yet this seemingly archaic-futurism is the most desired type of government in the Imperium. Feudal Technocracy seems to come straight out of SV, wherein Piper sets forth a libertarian/medievalist model in direct contrast to Asimov’s anti-medievalist position.

On the civilized world Marduk, Trask is asked about the government of the Sword-Worlds, the interstellar association he grew up in:

Well, we don’t use the word government very much,” [Trask] replied. “We talk a lot about authority and sovereignty. . . but government always seems to us like sovereignty interfering in matters that don’t concern it. As long as sovereignty maintains a reasonable semblance of good public order and makes the more serious forms of crime fairly hazardous for the criminals, we’re satisfied.”

“But that’s just negative. Doesn’t the government do anything positive for the people?”
He tried to explain the Sword-World feudal system to them. It was hard, he found, to explain something you have taken for granted all your life to somebody who is quite unfamiliar with it.
“But the government. . . doesn’t do anything for the people!” one of the professors objected. “It leaves all the social services to the whim of the individual lord or baron."

“And the people have no voice at all; why, that’s tyranny,” an Assemblyman added.

He tried to explain that the people had a very distinct and commanding voice, and that barons and lords who wanted to stay alive listened attentively to it. The Assemblyman changed his mind; that wasn’t tyranny, it was anarchy. And the professor was still insistent about who performed the social services.

“If you mean schools and hospitals and keeping the city clean, the people do that for themselves. The government. . . just sees to it that nobody’s shooting at them while they’re doing it.”

“That isn’t what Professor Pullwell means, Lucas. He means old-age pensions,” Prince Bentrik said (Space Viking, “Marduk” section III).

The pointed contrast is between a welfare state and the gunpowder-feudalism of the Sword-Worlds. While this feudalism shows some of the checks and balances found in the early United States, some might be tempted to label it “fascism” for the blatant militarism and piracy it displays: yet the text is clear in equating Dunnan with Hitler (“Maybe [Dunnan] was reading about Hitler. . . he was planning conquest. . . by subversion” [215, Marduk VII]), making the Space Vikings anti-fascist pirates.

Later SFRPG products from GDW continued to exhibit Piper’s influence: the source-book Star Vikings (1994) being the most obvious case, and the “growler” (an intra-mouth device allowing humans to speak with a species of aliens in Ranger, p. 24-5, 1989) being perhaps the most obscure (coming from Uller Uprising). The popular Piper novels about “Fuzzies” had no discernable effect on CT, presumably because the fuzzies are too cute for Traveller.

TerroHuman series
1st century AE	Four-Day Planet (1961)
4th century AE	Uller Uprising (1952)
7th century AE	The “Fuzzy” books (1962, 1964, 1984)
9th century AE	Cosmic Computer (1963)
1st to 9th century AE	Federation (short stories, collected 1981)
16th century AE	Space Viking (1963)
16th to 30th century AE	Empire (short stories of centuries 16 to 30)

From the reasoning above, it appears that the two most important written SF influences on CT are Tubb’s Dumarest of Terra series and Piper’s Space Viking. Dumarest answers the needs of adventurers lacking their own ship; SV points the way for ship owners. The works of other authors had some influence: for example, Poul Anderson’s world-building was inspirational for many involved in shaping CT; David Drake’s “Hammer’s Slammers” stories of galactic mercenaries (collected 1979) probably contributed to the combined role-playing/war gaming found in CT’s Mercenary (1978); and so on, down to the possibility that perhaps CT’s emperor “Cleon I” is the sole minutia mined from Asimov’s Foundation. But these traces can hardly be weighed against the elements from Tubb and Piper.

Traveller and the history of SF (1965 to 2001)

CT offered a new subgenre where hard SF mixed with noir situations, offering easy, deadly violence. CT achieved all of this within the realm of RPGs, establishing a brand that was the reigning standard for several years, yet this success did not trigger a “hard noir” or “spaghetti SF” trend in written SF. To examine CT’s legacy within the context of written SF, it is necessary to sketch out four different SF periods: New Wave, Star Wars, Cyberpunk, and Millennial Fever.

New Wave period (1965–77). The SF New Wave was a literary infusion of the “juvenile” genre. On the one hand this meant more adult-themed material (including sex and violence), and the sense that SF was “finally growing up.” But on the other hand, there was a move away from hard SF to soft SF, as well as an abandonment of space adventure in favor of inner space psychedelia. This gap is where CT created its niche.

One of the milestones for the New Wave is Harlan Ellison’s Dangerous Visions series of anthologies. Dangerous Visions (1967) had sold an incredible 50,000 copies in hardcover (plus 45,000 book club copies) by the time Again, Dangerous Visions (1972) went to press.

Star Wars period (1977–83), from Star Wars (1977) to Return of the Jedi (1983). The first movie was the number one top grossing film for 20 years (squeezed out by Titanic in 1997), and the other two are in the top ten as well. This is a cultural phenomenon much larger than the genre community, and its arrival effectively spelled the end of the New Wave.

Star Wars represented a return to the “juvenile” form of SF. Like CT, it was a space adventure rejection of New Wave, with a certain grittiness in machinery, and something of a noir-hero in Han Solo. But Star Wars also rejected hard SF and went in the direction of 1930s-era blasters and space opera, which CT had avoided. (It is also noteworthy that the "Star Wars" movies followed the D&D model: the hero is a young, unskilled farm boy who acquires skills and powers in the course of his adventure; i.e., he essentially “goes up a level” from time to time. This is the opposite of CT, where characters go through a career, get skills, and then go adventuring without getting further improvement.)

CT was boosted along, despite the differences. The SF movies of the period that come closest to CT are the "Mad Max” series and Blade Runner. Mad Max (1979), Mad Max 2: the Road Warrior (1981), and (slightly out of period) Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985) are morally ambiguous and violent, but set in the anarchy of a post-apocalyptic Earth rather than among the stars. Blade Runner (1982), film noir to the point of retro-stylings, features technology that is a good fit for CT (the “spinners” are CT grav cars; Deckard’s pistol is CT’s “body pistol”), and while the story is Earth-bound, there are hints of off-world colonies and interstellar warfare.

Media SF began to have an impact on CT: Trillion Credit Squadron (1981) brought the sort of fighter ships made popular by Star Wars and TV’s Battlestar Galactica (1978) into the Third Imperium.

Cyberpunk period (1983–92), from Jedi to Clinton. Written SF finally went noir, embracing hardboiled sentiments, criminal activity, and easy violence, all part of the CT mix. But contrary to CT, cyberpunk was never about space adventure; in fact, its signature “brain/computer interface” notion, taken from Delany’s award-winning space adventure Nova (1969), was just a fresh coat of paint on the New Wave’s “inner space.”

During this time, CT was revised as MegaTraveller (1986–91), in which a strong influence of Star Wars is evident: the Third Imperium, having been stable for eleven centuries, suddenly enters a period of civil war and rebellion.

Traveller: 2300 (1986) was initially a prequel to CT, but later it was spun off as a separate universe with 2300 AD (1988–91). This SFRPG featured the hardest “hard SF” of the day. It was influenced by the movies Alien (mainly art of Sigourney Weaver-type warriors and their weapons) and Blade Runner (building on that movie’s implied extrasolar colonies), as well as cyberpunk novels of brain/computer interface.

Millennial Fever period (1992–2001), from Clinton to September 11th. The USSR fell without a nuclear apocalypse, a miracle that took some years to see out. The arrival of the Internet spelled the end of cyberpunk, and the “post-industrial economy,” a dead pipe-dream of the 1980s, suddenly seemed to be coming true with the Internet’s new economy (cyberpunk’s scary “megacorps” had morphed into warm-and-fuzzy “dot com” start ups). The coming of the new millennium furthered the feeling of newness and transcendence: Vernor Vinge’s “singularity” (the near future “event horizon” of magical technology) being a perfect icon of this SF eschatology/evolution.

The “Baroque Space Opera” of Vinge’s award-winning A Fire Upon the Deep (1992) brought another surge of hard SF, but along with it came that pesky space opera. In addition it seemed at times as though the “hard SF” had been completely co-opted by the New Wave: nanotech, biotech, smart dust, personality uploads, grey goo, post-humans. . . all the “new” signs and symbols were outside the scope of Traveller.

Traveller: the New Era (1992) replaced MegaTraveller. The gaming company GDW ceased to exist in 1995, but Traveller itself sprouted up in new places: Marc Miller’s Traveller, or T4 (1996–98), GURPS Traveller (1996 and currently), and T20 (2002 and currently).

In media SF, the best approximation of CT appeared at this very late point in the form of an anime TV series and movie from Japan: Cowboy BeBop (1998). Noir and stylish, it features: space adventure; real brand-name guns in space; money-grubbing bounty hunters struggling to get enough money for their next meal; streetwise connections; combat enhancing drugs; shady alliances; double-crossing; treasure hunting; and more hard SF than just about any other anime to date.

Traveller was a vision powerful enough to dominate the SFRPG world, but never strong enough to break out of that niche. Written SF has cycled through three movements in the decades since Traveller premiered, yet none of these trends were quite the “hard noir” blend that Traveller represents. As a result, Traveller has remained on the margins of genre rather than being the heart of a subgenre—call it “the game that would be king.” It remains a sturdy creation inspired by war gaming and noir adventure, built upon a solid foundation of lesser-known SF texts.

Works Referenced

GDW. Adventure 6: Expedition to Zhodane. Game Designers’ Workshop: Bloomington, Illinois. 1981.

———. Double Adventure 1: Shadows/Annic Nova. GDW, 1979.

———. Double Adventure 2: Across the Bright Face/Mission on Mithril. GDW, 1979.

———. Journal of the Travellers’ Aid Society (issues 2, 3, and 4). GDW, 1979.

———. Supplement 1: 1001 Characters. GDW, 1978.

———. Supplement 3: The Spinward Marches. GDW, 1979.

———. Supplement 4: Citizens of the Imperium. GDW, 1979.

———. Supplement 6: 76 Patrons. GDW, 1980.

———. Traveller, Deluxe Edition. GDW, 1981.

Piper, H. Beam. Space Viking. Ace Science Fiction: New York. 1983.

———. Uller Uprising. Ace, 1983.

Schick, Lawrence. Heroic Worlds: A History and Guide to Role-Playing Games. Prometheus Books: Buffalo, New York. 1991.

Tubb, E.C. The Jester at Scar. Ace, 1982.

———. Jondelle. Arrow: London, 1977.

———. Kalin. Arrow: London, 1976.

———. Lallia. Ace, 1982.

———. Toyman. Ace, 1982.

———. The Winds of Gath. Ace, 1982.

Dumarest of Terra (first 17)

———.1. The Winds of Gath (1967)

———.2. Derai (1968)

———.3. Toyman (1969)

———.4. Kalin (1969)

———.5. The Jester at Scar (1970)

———.6. Lallia (1971)

———.7. Technos (1972)

———.8. Veruchia (1973)

———.9. Mayenne (1973)

———.10. Jondelle (1973)

———.11. Zenya (1974)

———.12. Eloise (1975)

———.13. Eye of the Zodiac (1975)

———.14. Jack of Swords (1976)

———.15. Spectrum of a Forgotten Sun (1976)

———.16. Haven of Darkness (1977)

———.17. Prison of Night (1977)

Source : http://irosf.com/q/zine/article/10119

How to create an epic story

Le Blog science-fiction de Marc

Un blog de science-fiction où je pense pouvoir trouver des articles bien intéressants : http://marcfvb.wordpress.com/


A consulter tout particulièrement :
http://marcfvb.wordpress.com/tag/space-opera/ et
http://marcfvb.wordpress.com/category/art-graphique/

Star Wars s'est inspiré de Valérian

Le dernier Valérian cartonne en librairie

Par Olivier Delcroix le 12 février 2010

"L'Ouvretemps marche très bien, c'est vrai, voilà une bonne nouvelle confirmée par Philippe Ostermann, directeur général délégué des éditions Dargaud. La semaine dernière, il s'en est vendu près de 55.000 exemplaires. Ce qui le classe directement en 2e position des meilleures ventes de BD après le François Bourgeon."
Finalement, après quarante-deux ans de bons et loyaux services spatio-temporels, Valérian et Laureline tirent leur révérence avec faste. L'album, intitulé L'OuvreTemps (Dargaud) est grand bouquet final en forme de feu d'artifice graphique. Non seulement, ce dernier album se vend bien en librairie, mais en plus, les amateurs sont nombreux à venir admirer le travail de Jean-Claude Mézières à l'exposition organisée par l'école des Gobelins dans le XIIIe arrondissement de Paris (du 19 janvier au 5 mars 2010).

« Nous avons commencé il y a longtemps, explique Pierre Christin, lunettes éternellement perchées sur le crâne et sourire aux lèvres. René Goscinny, rédacteur en chef de Pilote, avait détecté le potentiel de cette série, alors qu'il n'aimait pas particulièrement la science-fiction. Si on nous avait prédit que nous allions gloser sur le dernier des derniers, quarante ans plus tard, cela nous aurait fortement étonnés ! »

L'OuvreTemps constitue le dernier chapitre d'une trilogie baptisée Au bord du Grand Rien, entamée il y a huit ans. L'histoire, qui se déroule dans diverses galaxies, met en vedette Valérian et Laureline, deux agents spatio-temporels qui vivent dans le futur, à Galaxity.
Au cours de leurs aventures spatiales, ils ont perdu leur planète et cherchent à rejoindre leur époque. Pour cela, ils doivent se procurer l'OuvreTemps, métaphore de la boîte de Pandore.

« En réalité, explique le dessinateur Jean-Claude Mézières, nous avons programmé la fin de la série à cette époque-là. Mais avec ce dernier tour de piste, nous avons eu le désir de fournir un bel album. C'est pour cela que j'ai mis trois ans à le dessiner ! »
Et Christin d'ajouter : « Nous avons voulu boucler la boucle de manière élégante, pendant que nous sommes encore en forme. Valérian est un grand space opera dont le ferment est finalement le couple de Valérian et Laureline. Habituellement, les histoires d'amour et la science-fiction ne font pas bon ménage. » C'est sans doute ce qui, outre la virtuosité du dessin de Mézières et l'inventivité des scénarios de Christin, a valu à la série le prestige d'être copiée - certains diraient pillée - par le cinéma hollywoodien.
« De L'Empire des mille planètes à Bienvenue sur Alflolol, soupire Mézières, nous avons pris l'habitude que le cinéma, ce grand vampire, nous emprunte nos thèmes et l'imagerie du futur que nous avons mis en place durant ces quarante dernières années. De La Guerre des étoiles à Avatar. Mais on va dire que c'est la rançon du succès. »
On murmure que Luc Besson, qui prépare depuis quelques années la mise en chantier de grands studios de cinéma à la française dans les environs de Paris, miserait sur une adaptation cinématographique de Valérian et Laureline, rendant ainsi explicitement hommage à cette grande saga de science-fiction française. En attendant, on peut voir la preuve que la BD française inspire largement le cinéma américain. Et merci par ailleurs à ce passionnant blogueur pour avoir mis cela en évidence! Sources : http://blog.lefigaro.fr/bd/2010/02/apres-quarante-deux-ans-de-bon.html et http://www.kicswila.com/article-36257778.html

Année de 365,2425 puis 365 puis 368 puis encore 365 jours.

Une année est un intervalle de temps défini conventionnellement dans le cadre d’un calendrier, égal à un nombre entier de jours, et plus ou moins proche de l’année tropique qui correspond à la périodicité des saisons terrestres.
La durée d'une année et son commencement peuvent varier selon le calendrier considéré ; la durée de l’année tropique est elle-même sujette à variations au cours de longues périodes.


Dans la longue quête de la mesure et de la maîtrise de cette unité de temps qu'est l'année, les êtres humains de la Terre se sont longtemps contentés d'une coïncidence et d'une approximation fortuites, pourtant réellement observables, bien que sans cause à effet : Étant donnée qu'une lunaison moyenne dure approximativement 29,53 jours, douze lunaisons durent environ 354,36 jours, donc environ 11 jours de moins que l'année tropique qui, elle, détermine réellement la durée de l'année des saisons.

Les premiers à se détacher de la « lune trompeuse », en essayant de donner une valeur concrète à l'année tropique, furent les anciens Égyptiens, il y a plus de 5 000 ans, avec leur calendrier dit "vague" de 365 jours exactement.

Depuis, les êtres humains ont pu progressivement affiner leur connaissance de la durée de l'année tropique.

• L'année vague compte exactement 365 jours, une valeur conventionnelle de l'année tropique appliquée durant plus de 3000 ans dans le calendrier vague égyptien.

• L'année julienne s'appuie sur l'année tropique conventionnelle selon Sosigène d'Alexandrie (I^er siècle av. J.-C.), compte exactement 365,25 jours, soit 365 jours +1/4. (Cycle de quatre ans : trois ans de 365 jours, puis une année de 366 jours.) Cette unité de mesure est souvent utilisée encore lorsqu'une période est donnée en années.

• L'année grégorienne , adoptée à partir de 1582, se réfère à l'année tropique conventionnelle selon Christopher Clavius (1537–1612) qui compte exactement 365,2425 jours, soit 365 jours + 1/4 -1/100 +1/400. (Cycle de 400 ans : les années séculaires sont exceptionnellement années communes sauf celle dont le nombre de siècles est divisible par quatre.)
  

• L’année tropique conventionnelle, selon Simon Newcomb (°1835 – +1909), est l'année tropique utilisée traditionnellement en astronomie depuis près de 150 ans. Sa valeur de 365,2422 jours est beaucoup plus proche de la valeur de l'année tropique réelle que la valeur de Clavius (qui était astronomiquement correcte il y a près de 6 000 ans). Néanmoins, la valeur de Newcomb n'est pas un arrondi par défaut, (elle excède de ~9,5 millionième de jour, soit ~0,8 seconde, la valeur actuelle), de sorte qu'elle se faussera de plus en plus dans l'avenir, à raison du ralentissement de la rotation terrestre (voir Variation à long terme de la durée du jour).

• L'année tropique conventionnelle, selon Johann Heinrich von Mädler (°1794 – +1874), est l'année tropique scientifiquement la plus exacte, bien que toujours largement méconnue. Avec sa valeur, (arrondie par défaut, à ~2,5 millionième près), de 365 jours +1/4-1/128, soit 365,242 187 5 jours exactement, ou exactement 365 jours 5 heures 48 minutes 45 secondes ou bien 365 jours et 6 heures moins 11 minutes et 15 secondes, elle implique une année exceptionnellement commune tous les 128 ans (au lieu de tous les 133,333… ans, en moyenne, dans le calendrier grégorien actuel).

En 4518, compte tenu du déclin politique du système Sol (système des Solomani) et de la Terre, le calendrier chrétien grégorien est abandonné au profit de celui imposé par l'Empire de Canope (dit aussi "Empire du Centre" ou encore "Troisième Imperium").

Le nouveau calendrier impérial commence, c'est l'An 0, et son année compte exactement 365 jours au lieu des 365,2425 jours des années grégoriennes (voire des 365,242 187 5 jours des années tropiques conventionnelles de J.H. von Mädler).

La Terre n'est plus le monde-capitale du secteur galactique colonisé par les êtres humains. D'ailleurs, elle est évacuée d'urgence en 4538 lorsqu'un micro-trou noir lui tombe dessus provoquant de terrifiants désordres gravitiques. Il n'y a donc plus de raison qu'on se réfère à sa révolution autour du soleil pour compter les années. La Capitale est désormais Throon, le monde des Syléens, dans le système de Canopus.

A partir de 5200 environ (selon l'ancien calendrier sacré, et 682 du calendrier impérial canopien), plusieurs mondes peuplés d'êtres humains sont accueillis au sein de la République Galactique. Cette assemblée de civilisations non-humaines comptait déjà près de 21600 années d'existence au moment du contact ; avec son propre calendrier et son année standard.

Progressivement unis au sein de la Confédération de Naflin (fondée autour de 6050), ces mondes peuplés d'êtres humains vont à leur tour abandonner le calendrier impérial de Canope et adopter le calendrier républicain.

L'année républicaine compte 368 jours, se référant à la révolution de Coruscant autour de son étoile Coruscant Prime, longtemps accompagnée de ses quatre satellites naturels Centax 1, Centax 2, Centax 3 et Hesperidium (malheureusement détruits lors de la guerre contre les Yuuzhan Vong) ainsi que de ses nombreux satellites artificiels.
L'année se décompose en 10 mois (de 35 jours) + 3 semaines de festivals (des semaines de 5 jours) et 3 jours sacrés, de congé.

Mais en 9050, le nouvel empereur, Tortran "le Bâtisseur", change de monde-capitale. Il abandonne l'année qui fait référence à la planète Coruscant. La Loge Tekno lui a construit Prima. C'est un monde artificiel, au coeur de la Galaxie, un monde dont la révolution autour de son étoile a été soigneusement calculée et mise en place. Tortran, issu du peuple des Amarr (au nord-ouest de la Galaxie), eux-mêmes issus d'un lointain secteur, via une distorsion naturelle près du système de Canopus, a choisi une année identique à celle jadis adoptée par l'Empire de Canope : 365 jours.

Du calendrier républicain, il conservera tout de même la semaine de 5 jours. Les noms changeront d'une planète à l'autre mais on gardera ce rythme pour le travail et les loisirs. L'année sera ainsi découpée en 73 "semaines" (rebaptisées "pentades") de 5 jours.
73 et 5, deux nombres premiers; ce qui n'a pas manqué de ravir les Teknos.

Tho Yor

25,053 BBY : the Galactic Republic was established by the Core Founders in the Core Worlds, upon the signing of the Galactic Constitution.

It was already the year 11,400 after the Tho Yor Arrival.

The Tho Yor were the nine great pyramidal ships that carried the Force-sensitive ancestors of the Je'daii Order to Tython in 36,453 BBY, in what was termed the First Migration.

At least one of the pyramidal starships that the members of the Order of Dai Bendu would come to call the Tho Yor existed as long ago as the year 37,453 BBY. In that year, the Dai Bendu monks began to attend the vessel that rested half-buried in the snow high in the Andobi Mountains of the planet Ando Prime. The monks suspected the Tho Yor was of alien origin and contained important mysteries that would be revealed to them at some point in the future. To that end, the mystics continued to contemplate the artifact and meditate on it for a millennium, until in 36,453 BBY the starship finally opened itself and—using the Force to communicate with the Dai Bendu—invited the monks aboard. The Tho Yor subsequently rose from the planet's surface and traveled into outer space. The Tho Yor gathered Force-sensitive individuals from various species in the galaxy until bringing them all to the planet Tython. As of^[2] 25,793 BBY,^[3] the Tho Yor were scattered around the planet—each attached to one of the nine great temples of Tython, the centers of Je'daii culture and learning in the Tython system.

• Akar Kesh, Temple of Balance
• Anil Kesh, Temple of Science
• Mahara Kesh, Temple of Healing
• Kaleth, Temple of Knowledge
• Bodhi, Temple of the Arts
• Vur Tepe, The Forge
• Qigong Kesh, Temple of Force Skills
• Stav Kesh, Temple of Martial Arts
• Padawan Kesh, Je'daii Academy

La Décadence (9512-9798 soit 488-202 avant EG)

L'Empire consomme, annexe, mais ne produit plus. L’Église de la Vertu Démoniaque prêche la rédemption par le péché : décadence matérielle, libertinage, ...

Génésis, la créature-monde du Daym, définit la Décadence en ces termes : "Ils [les Humains et les espèces associées] sont mûrs pour s'autodétruire encore, chaque fois qu'ils se sont retrouvés à la même table, le ventre plein, à trouver que la table était trop exiguë et la nourriture trop exotique."

Le pouvoir impérial est discrédité. Son autorité s'émiette considérablement. Il est contraint d'appliquer une politique décentralisée et cède la place à des seigneurs locaux. Une nouvelle féodalité apparaît : baronnies, théocraties (dont celle des Karias), matriarchies, démocraties populaires, républiques exotiques, et menaçantes intelligences artificielles synchronisées au cœur même de l'Empire ...

Les rivalités entre seigneurs féodaux et le "Vieil" Empire provoquent une Guerre des Marches.
Une guerre d'usure s'installe entre les Mondes Synchronisés et la Ligue des Nobles.
Les mondes de niveau technologique inférieur (les Planètes Non Alignées) sont mis en quarantaine. La Bordure apparaît.


9513 Tlaloc échoue dans sa tentative de sortir le Vieil Empire de sa torpeur. Alors, avec 20 personnes (les Titans), il part à la conquête de l'Empire. Barbarossa reprogramme les ordinateurs, leur donnant l'agressivité humaine et la faim de pouvoir. Avec son aide, le Vieil Empire (de la dynastie Boro-Ginjo) tombe. Toutefois, certains systèmes en bordure de l'Empire résistent et fondent la Ligue des Nobles conduite par Salusa Secundus. Les scientifiques abandonnent Arrakis.

9520 Tlaloc meurt. Agamemnon et les autres Titans se sont eux-mêmes transformés en cymeks.
Parallèlement, une société secrète de femmes  perfectionne les techniques mentales et redécouvre les pouvoirs psi. Cette consoeurie deviendra plus tard le Bene Gesserit, ébauche de la future Église de la Conscience Universelle.

9600 (400 BG) Les Sorcières de Rossak commencent à tenir des registres détaillés de reproduction, commençant le programme génétique pour concevoir le futur Kwisatz Haderach.

9608 La Première Rébellion d'Hrethgir a lieu sur Walgis. Xerxes confie complètement le maintien de l'ordre sur sa planète au réseau local d'ordinateurs.

9617 Ajax, seigneur de Walgis écrase la rébellion et extermine la population humaine. Outrée par le massacre, sa compagne Hecate transfère son cerveau dans un vaisseau de l'espace profond et disparaît.

9618 Le réseau de Xerxes prend le contrôle d'Ix. Omnius, l'Intelligence Articifielle, met en place la structure des Mondes Synchronisés sur l'ensemble des planètes contrôlées par les Titans. Les Titans deviennent ses serviteurs.

Les ordinateurs dotés d'IA sont interdits sur les mondes de la Ligue des Nobles, et l'usage des ordinateurs moins sophistiqués est strictement limité.

Omnius lance une attaque contre la Ligue des Nobles. Les Bouddhislamiques croient que l'avènement des machines pensantes au pouvoir est le Kralizec des prophéties et s'enfuient principalement vers les Planètes Non Alignées. Plus tard, des esclaves bouuddhislamiques sont introduits sur quelques planètes de la Ligue des Nobles.

Barbarossa crée Beowulf.

9623(377 BG) Découverte de pierres runiques de Muadru sur une planète vierge.

9697 (303 BG) Dernier assaut massif des machines pour près d'un siècle.

9723 (277 BG) Les soldats de Ginaz découvrent Chirox (un formec) dans un navire interstellaire naufragé. Ils le reprogramment et commencent à l'utiliser pour l'entraînement des mercenaires de Ginaz.

9725 (275 BG) Hecate revient secrètement dans l'espace humain et commence à observer la guerre entre Omnius et la Ligue des Nobles. 

9726 (274 BG) Mariage de Manion Butler, Vice-Roi de Salusa Secundus, et Livia. Ils auront trois enfants : Serena Butler, Octa Butler et Fredo Butler.
Naissance de Camie Boro, descendante du dernier Empereur du Vieil Empire. 

9733 (267 BG) Ulf et Katarina Harkonnen sont attaqués par Agamemnon en route vers Salusa Secundus. Leur fils Piers s'écrase sur Caladan à bord d'une capsule de survie mais est porté disparu et finit sa vie parmi les Zensunni.

9780-90  Révolte de la théocratie karia. Intervention violente de monstronefs et de formecs. Choc psychologique : l'expansion est stoppée. (d'après le jeu de rôles Empire Galactique)

 

9795 (205 BG) Serena Butler conduit une équipe de secours sur la planète Non Alignée de Caladan, où des milliers de réfugiés des Mondes Synchronisés se sont enfuis. 

 

9796 (204 BG) Xavier Harkonnen, le frère de Piers, héritier de la Maison Harkonnen, devient un officier de la Milice Salusienne. Serena Butler envoie trois transporteurs de fournitures médicales à la planète Tlulax, dont la population souffre de mystérieuses maladies.  

 

9797 (203 BG) Tio Holtzman invente la  toile de Scrambler qui échoue néanmoins à protéger l'attaque des machines pensantes contre Salusa Secundus. Naib Dhartha exile Selim de son village mais découvre comment chevaucher les vers des sables d'Arrakis. Erasmus est transféré de Corrin jusqu'à la Terre. Omnius conquiert Giedi Prime et ensuite il envoie des milliers de sondes dans l'espace profond à travers la galaxie pour établir des bases pour les machines. Holtzman invite Norma Cenva à travailler avec lui sur Poritrin et elle invente les suspenseurs. Les esclavagistes de Tlulaxa capturent Ishmael sur Harmonthep et le vendent sur Poritrin. Serena est capturée et devient une esclave d'Erasmus pendant que la Ligue libère Giedi Prime. Mort d'Heoma et Barbarossa.

 

9798 (202 BG) Xavier Harkonnen et Octa Butler se marrient. Sur Arrakis, Tuk Keedair réalise que l'Epice peut avoir de la valeur. Holtzman invente le bouclier protecteur. Naissance de Manion l'Innocent. Vorian Atréïdes et Seurat mènent leur septième mission sur Walgis et rencontrent un champ d'astéroïdes qui endommage le Dream Voyager.

 

 

Remarque : La synthèse de différentes sources  (littéraires, cinématographiques, ludorôlistes, etc.) m'oblige à jongler entre des chronologies contradictoires dans leur ensemble et parfois certaines dates à l'intérieur d'une même chronologie. Mais le plus important, à mes yeux, est de fournir un résultat final cohérent.